The Catalans: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

three women who had all eaten the same poisoned dish of mussels. Mme. Roig was a widow, the widow of Gaston Roig, of the rich family of Saint-Féliu: she was a great power in the parish church, a childless woman, respected, but rather feared than liked in the village. She invited Madeleine to her house, interested herself in her, and interfered with her natural development.
    It appeared at first that Mme. Roig had probably taken her up with a view to converting her, for Madeleine was a Protestant—a Protestant at least in the mild and unemphatic manner of the Protestants of Saint-Féliu. So was her family, except for Mimi l’Empereur, but there was no sectarian fire in their religion, none in Saint-Féliu at all, where every day, from ten o’clock to half past ten, the curé and the pasteur walked together on the beach. This was a strange anomaly in such a vivid place, with violence and passion overflowing for the smallest disagreeing word: but there it was, a settled and acknowledged fact. Perhaps the explanation was that the people had almost no religious sense at all, were almost wholly pagan in their lives: but whatever was the underlying cause, they seemed as happy in the temple as the church, and practically indifferent to both.
    But if it was conversion, Mme. Roig did not persist: she was content to have the child, the young woman one might almost say, as a very pretty and submissive friend, overflowing with vitality and cheerfulness, a companion for odd afternoons. Presently Mme. Roig found that Madeleine had grown quite indispensable to her: she had a great deal to do, looking after her own big house and her nephew’s too, as well as keeping a strict eye on the curé’s housekeeper. She had a great deal to do, being a thorough, active-minded woman: there were her orphans, her charities, the decoration and the cleaning of the church, the dressing of the saints, and she found a younger pair of legs very useful. It was not only this severely practical view, however, that made Mme. Roig feel that it would be impossible to do without her: when the worst of Madeleine’s shyness had worn off—those early visits had been hours of torment for her, torment in anticipation chiefly, for she always enjoyed it when she had been there a little while—when she became more confident with Mme. Roig, she entered wonderfully into the old lady’s somewhat dried affections.
    In the end Mme. Roig justified herself by giving Madeleine presents from time to time, suitable presents like woolen stockings and calico drawers, and sometimes lace and handkerchiefs; by a private determination to do something handsome when Madeleine should marry; and by teaching her to sew, to keep accounts, and type. Mme. Roig could sew and sum admirably well herself; she had learned the first in a convent that was as famous for its sewing, its embroidery and lace as for its piety—a convent in the north of France—and the second while she looked after her brother’s house, he being vicaire général at Perpignan. But the typewriter, as she admitted, was beyond her competence; however, she did not condemn it for that reason or its novelty. She thought it a more useful accomplishment than the piano, and she bought a M. Boileau’s system of typewriting and taught Madeleine from it on the machine in her nephew’s office—taught her much as a man who cannot swim instructs his pupils from the edge of the swimming-bath.
    Madeleine and Francisco, then, were very much more apart than they had been for years; but still it was rare that a day went by without their meeting. All through the long summer the boats were out almost every night, and Madeleine, hitherto a slugabed, would be up and waiting at the crack of dawn, standing at the edge of the sea, watching for the boats to come round the point. They would come in, nearly always from the north, round the short breakwater on the left-hand horn of the little bay’s crescent, and if the tramontane was blowing,